by Leigh Newman
All in all, he was the greatest, sexiest, most wonderful man on earth. But he was also not quite ready for commitment. In fact, the first night in New York after Tuscany, he looked lovingly into my eyes and said, “I’m not really ready for a relationship.”
I blinked. Deep in my heart, I was making strange, wounded-kitten noises, which was a bit disconcerting, because I wasn’t ready for a relationship, either. Except what if I was? Then I was sunk, because I’m not ready is just polite code for “I don’t like you enough.” I stood very still. Finally, with perfect girls’-school/Alaskan-survival composure, I said, “Me neither. In fact, I think we should see other people. Starting now.”
So we did. One year passed, then another and another and another. He lived in his apartment and I lived in mine. I didn’t keep socks or CDs at his place. He didn’t keep socks or CDs at mine (thank God, because he was partial to lite jazzy Brazilian numbers). If I decided to make him a beef stew, I lugged all four of my French copper saucepans (graciously given to me by my uncle Steven before he ran off to the Dominican Republic) two miles over to Lawrence’s apartment and then, in the morning, brushed my teeth with my finger and packed up those same pots and staggered home with forty pounds of semi-tarnished metal on my back. Leonard was my dog, not his. I was free to see other people. He was free to see other people.
In my dark liar’s heart, of course, I knew that if I found out that Lawrence was actually seeing anybody else I would kill him. Except that I wouldn’t kill him. I would just sob and watch helplessly as he stomped over me and walked off into the distance with his hotter, no doubt sweeter paramour. This meant I also actually had to date other people, as many people as possible, so that when he stomped off I wouldn’t be standing alone like my mom, sobbing; I’d be standing with some guy I wasn’t in love with and I’d had sushi with once—and only once, because he was too tall and not Lawrence and hated snow. (Ugh.)
However, when it came down to the really crucial issue, me getting the hell out of there, Lawrence and I were on the same page. If I had a story, he’d either come with me to Bombay or Toronto or Madrid or Portland—or he’d let me go by myself, and he didn’t think it was strange if I didn’t call or email for a few weeks from Kyoto or Lafayette or Marrakech. He didn’t miss people, he claimed. His parents had divorced when he was nine. Then his dad died when he was twenty. Then his mom died a few years ago, suddenly, of bone cancer.
This was such a relief, to find somebody who didn’t miss me the way I didn’t miss him. I didn’t have to summon a phony sense of despair over the phone. Or bring him some dopey Pope-on-a-Rope soap from Rome. I could just come back and love him and tell him only once every couple of weeks, not to freak him out.
Also comforting was our arrangement. We traveled together and we spent weekends upstate at his falling-down farmhouse rental, but not the weekdays when he had “stuff to do” and I “had to go.” The longest time we’d been together straight was twenty unbelievable, sun-stunned days in the deserts of Tunisia, living in a silken tent on the edges of an oasis, with a valet who brought us cold mint tea on horseback, wearing an authentic “Nights of Arabia” turban.
That is, until the fall of year four, when I sublet my apartment to earn a little extra money and go on vacation. My plan was to come back from Milan for work, stay for three weeks in New York to file stories, then head out of town for another three weeks with Leonard on the road, cross-country. It was a Saturday, the day I’d gotten back from Milan. Lawrence was reading the newspaper. I was looking at AAA maps. “So I guess we’ll just crash with you, and then head out really early on the fifteenth of October.”
He looked up. “Huh?”
“I have a subletter. I can’t stay in my place. There’s a girl living in it, paying my rent.”
“Three weeks.”
“Well it’s not like I’m a stranger. You love me and I love you. It’s not like I’m moving in.”
“It’s just … that’s a lot of commitment.”
Nothing from me.
“Actually, I don’t want to be a jerk, but it’s too much commitment.”
The door of horrible understanding opened, and a flood of rotten stink water washed over me. I was thirty years old. I couldn’t stay at the love-of-my-life’s house for three weeks—which for the record I was thinking of as nothing more than a hotel-style stay, except that I wouldn’t pay or tip him. I stood up. I whistled for Leonard, who remained passed out on the sofa. I said—rapidly, with no planning or awareness—“Either we get married or this is over. You have two weeks to make up your mind. I am leaving town during this period. Don’t call. Don’t write. I’m taking my dog … and your car.”
Lawrence’s mouth fell open.
Mine was already open, which evidently is not just a metaphorical expression. Your jaw can drop as if a tiny but crucial screw in the joint has shot out and skittered across the floor. You could fit a toaster oven in my mouth. Or an armchair. You could fit a whole entire person, the whole entire other person who took over my soul and made me—
Propose. Or threaten a proposal at least. As if I were obsessed and professional about getting married, when, up to this moment, I’d never had one single thought about getting married, except with raw, gibbering terror. I mean, why would any intelligent person want to get married? Why not go directly to the brick factory and stand under the brick-machine and let it spit bricks down directly onto your head?
I had to go, I suddenly realized. I had to get out of there, right now, on any kind of road, at high speeds, without stopping to pee or eat. Off I ran, pulling Leonard, who also looked shocked. And kind of worried.
Three weeks later, I was staying with my welcoming if surprised mother. The phone rang. It was the age before caller ID. I picked up. “I miss you,” Lawrence said.
I miss you, too, I almost said. Except the voice that had taken over my mouth the last time we talked popped out again, not unlike a magic bully in a bottle. And the voice said: “What’s your verdict? In or out?”
“Well.” He sighed. “It all happened so fast.”
“Hah-hah,” I said. Then laughed for real. He laughed, too. Then I stopped laughing, because if there was one thing Lawrence was good at, it was charming his way back in. His was an honest, vulnerable charm, the kind nine-year-old boys use (without quite knowing they’re doing so) to get out of going to juvie hall after getting caught stealing baseball cards. But it was charm nonetheless—frosting on a bruised apple. I stopped laughing. “Lawrence,” I said. “Four years is not fast. Four years is glacial. Entire species of Galapagos boobies have come to life via genetic aberration in four years. The Revolutionary War was won in four years.” (If there was one thing I was good at, it was rattling off dubious factoids in an authoritative, trustworthy voice.)
“Here’s what I think,” Lawrence said. “And I really have tried to sort this all out.” Thus began his spiel: He thought it was a good idea if he thought and I thought about getting married maybe, sometime in the near future. There was a lot of family history, for both of us. There were also some issues between us. There were some fears and some considerations and emotions and so forth. And for the record, the Revolutionary War lasted eight years, 1775 to 1783.
“Like what fears and emotions?”
“Like what if I get mad cow disease? I’m not sure you’ll stay home and nurse me.”
Mad cow disease. From the man whose worst fear was breaking his kneecaps. From the man who would not walk with scissors or a sharp-looking toothbrush. But also from the guy whose parents both died from evil sicknesses that came on and took them over and took them away. “I’ll stay home and nurse you,” I said. “What else?”
“If we get divorced, you’ll take all my money and kick me out.”
Did I mention Lawrence grew up kind of poor? He called it working class. I called it three kids and a single mom living on a teacher’s aide’s salary. Every now and then, he’d mention the little miracles that helped them survive, such as the time
a strange man hit his mother’s car (hurray?) and they were able to use the insurance money to live instead of fixing the dents. “I’m not going to take your money. If I need money, I make my own money. I have been doing it since age twelve.”
Now was the time that I was supposed to share my fear: If he cheated on me casually, he must never tell me, especially not to make himself feel better. And if he cheated on me and fell in love with somebody else, he still just had to pretend to love me for at least another ten years, after which he could off me with a painless animal tranquilizer, which for me would be easier. Being dead is safe, in that you have no heart to rip out of your body. I didn’t say any of this, however. I said, “Okay, fears taken care of. In or out?”
“Well, it’s a big decision. It’s a life change.” He said this in a quizzical, pensive voice, completely devoid of any joking, as if he were puzzling something out. “All those feelings involved.”
“I’m not interested in feelings. I’m interested in action. I’m not losing any more altitude with a romantic dibble-dabbler. You have to do something.”
Thus, one week later, Lawrence moved out of his giant rambling loft apartment into my tiny homey dump—citing problems with his landlord, who wouldn’t allow him to have a roommate. He didn’t bring any furniture or books. He brought a toothbrush and a few shirts. But he slept there every night. It occurred to me that other people who lived together owned blenders in common and opened joint checking accounts, and applied for—I don’t know—communal Blockbuster cards?
But, quite frankly, the living together was already a little difficult for me. I hadn’t thought about what it meant when another person moved into your five hundred square feet of previously total privacy. Lawrence came with a lot of periodicals. He read four newspapers a day and subscribed to over ten magazines, all of which he refused to throw out until they’d been read cover to cover and the choicest articles clipped for future reference. Not unexpectedly, he couldn’t keep up, and had solved the problem with a Byzantine system of piling that was not so much a system as a bunch of dirty mixed-up piles of paper and bills and clippings that aged and yellowed and tottered in every corner. In his huge, rambling apartment, these towers made him look like a cute, absentminded English librarian. Here in my tiny homey dump, it was a little difficult to get to the refrigerator.
Not to mention that when he slept, he took the soft pillow.
Often, staring up at the ceiling, my head on the hard, lumpy, neck-cramping pillow, I thought, What was I doing when I rammed the marriage idea down Lawrence’s throat? Maybe I was just hurt about not being allowed to stay with him for a few weeks and wanted to really get him back (it’s not unlike me to go all the way to getting married in order to win an argument). Or maybe there’s some humiliating, needy person inside me who just wants to get married. Is this humiliating, needy person also the dream-me? Ever since Lawrence moved in, I’d stopped packing in my sleep.
So here we are, one year later, at the falling-down farmhouse, about to get married. One hour before the ceremony, I’m still in a tube top and cutoff jeans, both flecked with black mud from my efforts to build a small silk lounge tent beside the large main wedding tent—all on ground that’s just a little too close to the pond to be dry or stable.
My original wedding idea had been for us to run away to Greece and say our vows on a volcanic caldera. That is, until Lawrence brought up his idea: inviting his entire Irish extended family, plus everyone he’d ever liked ever, dating back to nursery school in Buffalo. I was slightly taken aback, considering our dating history. But I took to the brute labor of ordering gold-painted plastic forks and wiring icicle lights, as if I were building a sauna out of river rocks dragged from the bottom of a glacial lake by hand (something Dad, Abbie, and I did once during a family fun week in the bush).
Lawrence, on the other hand, didn’t exactly take to a year of prep and slavery. His contribution to the planning was tablecloths, as in, “Leigh, relax. We’ll just invite everybody and get some tablecloths and, you know, put them on some tables.”
Holding a shovel and a punch list, staring at the cold, empty chafing dishes that have not been filled with lamb vindaloo and paneer paleek because the couple who owns the one Indian restaurant within a two-hundred-mile radius of Jeffersonville has not yet found their way through twisty, unmarked roads to the farmhouse, I begin to sink into a bleak, glazed silence.
My friend Lewis orders me to leave the wedding site. I pretend to head out, but really go start weeding an abandoned tomato patch filled with dead vines. Lewis finds me one more time, and shoves me gently into my mother’s car. Then he runs off to find my mother, who’s supposed to drive me to the hotel to get dressed.
The wedding, after all, is in one hour.
I sit there on the hot passenger seat, alone with my hedgehog of panic—that bristling, clawed little ball that I can manage in front of other people, as long as I’m yelling at them to fluff the daisies in each and every mason jar. Here in the quiet of the car, though, the hedgehog unrolls; the hedgehog begins to scrabble around, looking for a way out of the newspaper-lined cage and back to the happy forest burrow, stabbing me with its exquisitely sharp quills. Because I have some idea—in a textbook way—what you’re supposed to feel at your wedding: joy (lots of joy) as well as maybe some nerves or even fear, if not a few upset old feelings about relatives or confusing friends, in addition to a sense of import about the life-changing nature of the occasion.
But slice me open with a Ginsu knife and what you have is Styrofoam. I have no feelings, save for a frantic desire for somebody to look straight at me and say, in a deep, godlike voice, infused with ceremony, YOU ARE DOING THE RIGHT THING. That somebody, who is all-knowing, then needs to patiently explain how much in love you need to be in order to spend the rest of your life with someone, as well as explain the differences between loving somebody; being in love with somebody; love that’s really just lust or passion; and love that’s really just a thick, white plaster cast over a broken hole of loneliness. That somebody will also know where Lawrence and I fit within the panoply of scientifically proven love rubrics—and explain in a dismissive, patronizing, high-skilled-doctoral manner that I do not, under any circumstances, fit in the last loneliness category—after which she or he will stamp our foreheads: APPROVED.
This is a stamp I have wanted for quite a while, in all kind of situations. It’s a ridiculous ambition, clearly, and I long ago found my way around it by confronting the fact that, when it comes down to knowing what you want to do: I don’t know what I want to do; I don’t have anybody to ask; the people I could ask, I won’t believe; and so to get over the hedgehog balling and stabbing and prickling me all over, I just do the nearest, fastest, most difficult thing and live with repercussions.
A wedding, however, has some pretty serious repercussions.
My mother slides into the driver’s seat. Her door thunks shut. She gives the steering wheel a little nurturing tap, the way she always does, as if it to encourage Baby, which is the car’s name. Baby is a seventeen-year-old white BMW sedan, with a streak of green glitter paint across the side made by enraged ghetto sixth-graders on Halloween, when Mom left Baby at a Head Start center overnight. “That’s my girl,” says Mom to the car as we rev out of the valley.
I haven’t seen her in about five hours. This morning, she left the farmhouse in search of scissors at nine o’clock and came back four hours later—with thirteen pairs of scissors and ten rolls of tape that were no longer needed, plus a surprise she purchased for me at a country antiques shop: a lovely vintage sugar bowl. The sugar bowl is, indeed, lovely. I could probably spend the rest of my life looking at the whorls of my fingertip through the frosted, translucent blue of the glass. She hands it to me now, mentioning I’d forgotten it in the kitchen.
“Thanks?” I say, holding it carefully as we speed up the twisty road that leads over the mountain and out of the valley. I’m tempted to ask, Mom? Do you think I should marry Lawrence? Last y
ear, however, I asked her this very question and she looked at me, then said in a kind but distant voice, like the one you use with a hardworking, overqualified waitress whom you’ll never see again, “Dear, that’s none of my business.”
Meanwhile, right now, I have a sugar bowl in my lap. I need to let it in. I need to thank her. She is trying to love me with this sugar bowl—down to the little silver cover on the bowl, embossed with wildflowers. This kind of love has been going on since I left home for college, when all of a sudden she began sending me gifts, exquisite, inexplicable ones: luxury umbrellas, a strand of pearls, decorative crystal rocks inscribed with the word COURAGE. I was never sure if these were apologies for the confusions of my childhood, or if she had simply gotten happier since I’d left home. Raising a child on your own is a lot of work, especially if your child happened to be me.
After the blueberry-muffin episode, I started behaving in Baltimore the way I did in Alaska—only with a big, fat splash of attitude. Mom didn’t have other kids or a husband she might love more than me—which, sadly for us both, meant I just wasn’t afraid enough of losing her, the way I was with Dad. I sneered and savaged and stormed out, coming back only occasionally, and only to change clothes. Maybe I was confused and upset on the inside, but that was way, way, way deep on the inside. The rest of me was livid, even when she was behaving normally or even trying to help me by offering to wash my shirts for school.
Then the call came, a few weeks into my junior year of high school. I found Mom sobbing in her bedroom. Maybelle had snapped and gone catatonic. She’d been committed to a state asylum. I tried to study for the SATs as we drove to Alabama overnight—too broke for a flight as always, trading off at the wheel during the twenty-five-hour-long straight shot down I-95, stopping once and only once, at a Waffle House on the beltway outside Atlanta.